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St. Regis Show Adds to OC’s Stature as Center of Swimwear

Major swimwear brands and retailers will gather this week for the Swim Collective at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point, sipping on bubbly and looking for sales.

It is the latest stop for the trade show, which is produced by the California Swimwear Association in Santa Barbara and now has three yearly events.

It’s no surprise that the Jan. 15-16 edition is in Orange County, home to a vibrant group of swimwear designers and manufacturers that account for hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales thanks to their own brands, as well as license deals for big designer labels.

Swim Collective is the “first one in awhile that has a shot at becoming a West Coast Miami [SwimShow],” said Carrie Seifert, public relations director at Cypress-based Manhattan Beachwear LLC. “It’s definitely growing in importance, and hopefully in the next couple of years it can become as big as the Miami show.”

Swim Collective’s organizers aimed high from the get-go. The group kicked off the trade show in August 2011 as a 100-booth event in Newport Beach. It moved to the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa in 2012, becoming a biannual event with the addition of a January show in 2013.

This is its first year at the posh Monarch Beach resort for the January edition, where labels and retail buyers get a jump on trends for the peak summer season.

New Show

The association is keeping its Hyatt Regency reservations for a new show—the Swim Collective Invitational Swim Preview—to be held in June. That’s a month ahead of the Miami SwimShow, the leader of the circuit that’s been put on by the Swimwear Association of Florida for the past 32 years at the city’s convention center. The Miami show regularly attracts more than 7,500 brands and buyers from some 60 countries, according to the organizers.

The notion of giving designers and retail buyers a chance to mix before Miami “is great because it will allow us to get early reads on product,” said Rachel Sopinsky, public relations manager at Beach Bunny Swimwear. The Irvine-based brand plans to present its 2015 summer swimwear collection, its 2015 spring/summer lingerie collection, and swimwear and active wear from its children’s line at the show in Dana Point. 

Some in the local industry have big expectations for the June edition, although hopes are tempered.

“Swim Collective has grown considerably due to its boutique, upscale feel and its location in the mecca of the swimwear world, the OC,” said Britt Hertell, public relations and licensing manager at Raj Manufacturing LLC in Tustin. “We believe that the June show will someday rival the Miami show in July for the pre-eminent swim show in the world, although this will take time to develop.”

Raj Manufacturing will debut summer collections from Ella Moss, Splendid, Hurley and Athena this week in Dana Point.

The company is also showing “a new active inspired vignette from Nautica called H20 Active,” Hertell said.

The group’s August show—dubbed an international edition—will be held at the Long Beach Convention Center.

Space

Space may be one of the reasons for the move, as attendance at the August 2014 show increased 50% year-over-year, according to the organizers.

“[The Huntington Beach show] started off in the main room, and over the years it grew into the hallway, the common area, and now they’ve even opened up the second ballroom,” said Jenny Moreno, women’s sales director at Irvine-based Tavik Industries LLC who will be presenting the brand’s spring and summer 2015 lines at the trade show in Dana Point.

Swim Collective provides a “more workable show environment” for West Coast-based buyers who are only looking for swimsuits, Manhattan Beachwear’s Seifert said.

“It’s another alternative for them to go to instead of Magic [in Las Vegas], where it’s so busy and it’s so hectic,” she said. “We see 40% of our customer base on the West Coast at Swim Collective, and the other 60% we still have to see at Magic. Swim Collective is definitely growing, but unfortunately at this point we still have to do both shows.”

New Section

Manhattan Beachwear is also looking forward to the new section of the show—Active Collective—to showcase the Trina Turk recreation line. It will present its own line of women’s active and lifestyle apparel under the brand name Pink Lotus, which it acquired along with the Green Dragon label in July when it bought CMK Manufacturing in Los Angeles.

“It gives us a dedicated marketplace to show our activewear,” Seifert said. “We don’t have an active show anywhere else. It brings in a whole different type of buyer—they don’t necessarily buy swimwear, but they buy for their resort store or their spa store that is apparel-based, more lounge, resort activewear. It opens up that market for us and gives them a place to go and buy.”

Tavik launched its apparel line this year, Moreno said, adding that she’s “excited to see” how Active Collective differs from Swim Collective.

“I’m sure [they added it] because a lot of swimwear companies have expanded their coverups and things like that, and a few have launched apparel like we have,” she said. “But we are still keeping it with swim. We plan to see how these shows are and possibly separate it in the future.”

The proximity of the venue to local brands’ headquarters promises to lure executives to the show. The upper echelon from Beach Bunny will “pop in whenever their schedules allow,” Sopinsky said.

Opportunity

It also provides an opportunity for sales reps to meet with smaller, less-mobile retailers, along with the big ones, such as Victoria’s Secret, Planet Blue, Barneys New York Inc., Bloomingdale’s Inc., Dillard’s Inc., Zappos.com and Diane’s Beachwear, which have attended in the past.

“It is nice to be close to home—you get a lot of local accounts, California-specific accounts that can’t make it to Miami, specialty and fashion boutiques who want to add swim or expand swim or try swim,” Moreno said. “And it’s always at a nice venue, smaller and more intimate. I like the personal touches they do, as well—the champagne—and how they offer lunch and snacks. They really make it easy for the buyers, and of course that makes us happy.”

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